NTP sues smartphone giants over wireless e-mail patents

Armed with validation of many of its claims in four of its eight patents, …

Patent holding company NTP, most famous for successfully suing BlackBerry maker RIM for violating its patents for "wireless e-mail," is now targeting some of the most successful smartphone hardware and software makers for patent infringement. The company claims that Apple, Google, HTC, LG, Microsoft, and Motorola are infringing NTP's eight patents for "delivery of electronic mail over wireless communications systems."

NTP sued RIM way back in 2001. After several years of litigation, RIM eventually settled and wrote NTP a $612.5 million check. Emboldened by its victory, NTP also sued AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless.

In the course of these lawsuits, the US Patent and Trademark Office had made a preliminary ruling invalidating NTP's patents. Late last year, however, the USPTO Board of Patent Appeals ruled that 67 of the claims in four of NTP's patents are indeed valid. NTP is still fighting in federal court to have the rest of the USPTO's rejections overturned as well.

Confident that at least some of its claims are valid, the company is going after anyone involved in the "delivery of e-mail across wireless communications systems." It claims that one of its cofounders, Tom Campana, "invented" wireless e-mail.

"The filing of suit today is necessary to ensure that those companies who are infringing NTP's patents will be required to pay a licensing fee," NTP cofounder Donald Stout said in a statement. "In view of the USPTO Board's ruling, the debate over whether Mr. Campana was an originator in the field of wireless e-mail is over."

On the face of it, this claim is quite bold. Most wireless e-mail uses standard protocols that work regardless of the wired or wireless nature of the network. However, push e-mail services like those the BlackBerry made commonplace use specialized servers, and push e-mail features used in today's smartphones may very well use methods described in NTP's patents. It's unclear, though, which specific claims will be relevant to this case until NTP's appeals over its patents are settled.

In targeting the likes of Microsoft, Apple, and Google, NTP is swimming with the big boys. This looks to be a long, expensive fight. That $600 million RIM forked over a few years ago is going to come in handy.

47 Reader Comments

Their choice of defendants seems somewhat surprising. Google, Apple, and Microsoft certainly aren't going to just roll over and take it, especially considering the patents were found invalid at one point. HTC, LG, and Motorola can likely clam up and simply say "the OS developer did it" and point their fingers at GOOG and MSFT. More fun in patent land...

As an aside, how old is this patent? If they sued back in 2001, how long did they hold the patent before the lawsuit?

As an aside, how old is this patent? If they sued back in 2001, how long did they hold the patent before the lawsuit?

This all is exactly what came to mind after I'd finished reading the article.

What I want to know is this:a.) What -exactly- does this patent cover?b.) If it is just "We invented wireless e-mail! The idea is ours!"... What court would possibly rule in their favor? We should break down the entire communication network involving e-mail because some group of jerks patented a concept a decade ago and did fuck-all with it?

Have to agree with xeoph here: Our patent system needs revising. These "patenting firms" need to be shut down. Patenting things, holding on to ideas you can't execute, and waiting for someone with a bigger wallet/brain/whathaveyou to come along and do something with it, only to sue them, is an existence somewhere lower on the scale of worth than a tapeworm.

As an aside, how old is this patent? If they sued back in 2001, how long did they hold the patent before the lawsuit?

This all is exactly what came to mind after I'd finished reading the article.

What I want to know is this:a.) What -exactly- does this patent cover?b.) If it is just "We invented wireless e-mail! The idea is ours!"... What court would possibly rule in their favor? We should break down the entire communication network involving e-mail because some group of jerks patented a concept a decade ago and did fuck-all with it?

Have to agree with xeoph here: Our patent system needs revising. These "patenting firms" need to be shut down. Patenting things, holding on to ideas you can't execute, and waiting for someone with a bigger wallet/brain/whathaveyou to come along and do something with it, only to sue them, is an existence somewhere lower on the scale of worth than a tapeworm.

Patents were created to protect the original inventor who sunk time and money into the concept. What has NTP sunk into these patents? Nothing. And lawyers wonder why no one respects them anymore.

Well, I am sure they bought the patents from the inventor, who was quite happy to get cash for it. So that at least is legit. But to hold a patent and then sue long after it's use has become commonplace, well that's just a crappy thing to do.

My other beef with most tech patents is that they are far too broad, and are being used to extort money from people who's supposed infringment is far beyond the scope of the original claims of the patent.

Patents were created to protect the original inventor who sunk time and money into the concept.

While I agree that payment for the inventor is a nice outcome (for them), that is not the primary motivator behind copyright. Originally, the main aim was to ensure that people kept inventing/creating things. It was felt that, without an opportunity for remuneration, people wouldn't bother making new stuff.

In other words, copyright was meant to help enrich the public domain, not to prevent or stifle competition. The technology sector moves too fast for standard copyright terms to apply. I suggest that 10 years is a good limit - not too short that people will just wait for it to expire, but not too long that patent holders can just sit about until someone juicy appears to infringe.

However, I am more likely to see unicorns snowboarding down the slopes of Hell than copyright terms reduced, so I'll grab some popcorn, sit down and watch this drama unfold...

It's really simple to fix, but the problem is our dumb and corrupt govt: anyone holding a patent should have X amount of time to come up with a working product or license the patent to someone who makes such a product. If no product results from a patent in that time the patent becomes public property so someone else can take a shot and try to come up with a product. I don't know, make that 3 or 5 years and ban any extensions. If the patent can't be turned into a consumable product or service, because it's just a part or a process then it shouldn't be patented in the first place. This would prevent such scumbags from holding patents purely for litigation purposes without any intentions of coming with a product.

So suddenly existing mail protocols for SMTP, POP, IMAP, TCP/IP are suddenly different because it's a mobile device? My MacBook Pro is just a glorified iPhone since it runs the same kernel, uses similar software, and uses the exact same protocols my phone does. Companies like NTP need to die and all their "patents" released for fair use to stop this ridiculous behavior.

Doesn't the "obvious" rule for patents apply here? If existing mail protocols worked over wired connections, isn't it obvious they work over wireless connections by natural extension? Unless of course NTP is talking about specific push-type e-mail that doesn't follow standard mail protocols (which used to be an issue way back when like with RIM, but isn't an issue now).

Although Microsoft and Google obviously have deeper pockets than RIM, I think they're going to find it tough to win, given that I would imagine RIM exhausted everything they could before forking over the cash. I'm of two minds on patents. Patent enforcement by companies that never did anything with the patentable material seems wrong. OTOH, making money from new and fresh ideas seems like something defensible. In any case, I think NTP is likely to prevail in these cases, given their history against RIM.

"It's really simple to fix, but the problem is our dumb and corrupt govt: anyone holding a patent should have X amount of time to come up with a working product or license the patent to someone who makes such a product"

Well it is not quite that simple since it is possible that a considerable effort could be involved in successfully commercializing the patent. But this point does relate to the worst problem with patents. That is giving big rewards to those who never had any serious intention of making the effort to actually develop a commercial product.

This is great news. The patent system is completely broken, so the only hope is to force the issue. We cannot just sit and hope that patent trolls (or companies who can afford to bury their competition legally) won't sue. As long as the law is on their side, they MUST sue.

So, the more lawsuits the better. Whatever the end result, it must be brought to its logical conclusion as soon as possible.

it's not the Lawyers... it's the concept, the system - that must be changed. What pisses me off is, how much percentage of a smartphone's purchase price is actually hardware BOM cost, how much is OS- & core-apps development, and how much are the damn "licensing fees" for some shitty patents ?!?

I have a great Idea that can teach a child anything it wants to know, but because of fucking patent-licenses I'd have to make and sell it at levels that's unbearable for the end-consumer!

I believe, if a company that does not 'utilize' their patents in actual, current products should loose their patent-rights automatically after a certain time frame passed, so it goes into public domain. that time frame is depending on 'average lifecycle' of a product type the patent depends on.

Patents were created to protect the original inventor who sunk time and money into the concept.

While I agree that payment for the inventor is a nice outcome (for them), that is not the primary motivator behind copyright. Originally, the main aim was to ensure that people kept inventing/creating things. It was felt that, without an opportunity for remuneration, people wouldn't bother making new stuff.

In other words, copyright was meant to help enrich the public domain, not to prevent or stifle competition. The technology sector moves too fast for standard copyright terms to apply. I suggest that 10 years is a good limit - not too short that people will just wait for it to expire, but not too long that patent holders can just sit about until someone juicy appears to infringe.

However, I am more likely to see unicorns snowboarding down the slopes of Hell than copyright terms reduced, so I'll grab some popcorn, sit down and watch this drama unfold...

You appear to be conflating two different concepts, copyright and patents, and I'm not sure which you're talking about when you argue for term reduction.

You guys are wrong. RIM did not lose the lawsuit. They settled. They decided the risk of dragging it on and the chances of the patents being validated (the initial decision to invalidate the patent happened shortly after the settlement) didn't match up. So RIM gave them a lot of money but NTP got a lot less than they sued for.

Now its up to MSFT & Google and whoever else to show NTP that they're playing with the big boys who own a lot more patents and know a lot more about technology than they do.